


Do they know it's Christmas....?

by Kintatsujo



Category: Kamen Rider OOO
Genre: Ankh is new to senses, Christmas, Gen, Headcanon, Vignette, but only if you want to read it that way, drinking culture, possibly implied relationships, title is awful
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-04
Updated: 2012-12-04
Packaged: 2017-11-20 07:12:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/582692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kintatsujo/pseuds/Kintatsujo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ankh reflects.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Do they know it's Christmas....?

 

 

     Ankh remembered Christmas.  It had been fairly important in the kingdom of his original birth; with trees decorated in apples and candles and burning of Yule logs and carols taking over Mass, although it only seemed fair that the land should quiet itself with emotion-hungry Greeed roaming the countryside.  The king's soldiers drank themselves stupid, and it was only a pact he had made with OOO that kept Ankh from quietly devouring one or two of them, to find out why they would do it.

     Shingo thought that Christmas was a romantic holiday.  Ankh didn't know where this came from, it seemed so-- so diminished from what he remembered it as.

     He'd asked OOO why the soldiers drank.  "What does beer do to them that they laugh and stumble around camp like that?"

     OOO hesitated.  Ankh couldn't remember his face.  The distinctive features of humans had surprised him when he'd experienced them through Shingo: as a pure Greeed, he just... just hadn't noticed them, couldn't entirely _perceive_ them.  He sort of thought his king might have had blonde hair, because it wasn't dark like Eiji's was.  He tried very hard not to just fill OOO's face in with Eiji's eyes, nose, mouth.

     "It dulls away the world for them," OOO told him.

     Ankh was shocked.  "But why-why do they _do_ it then?!!"  He'd waved his hands a little, trying to articulate things that he couldn't quite and that OOO already knew.

OOO reached out and put a soothing hand on his arm.  Remembering the touch, Ankh wondered... would OOO have had smooth hands like Hina's, or rough ones like Eiji's?  He had no idea, and the answer was forever lost to him.  The only thing that was vibrant in his memory was the glow that OOO bore, the sheen that marked him as the user of the belt.

     "Sometimes full perception is painful," the king said.  Maybe he'd had a beard.  Lots of men from that time wore beards.  Ankh knew this because all the vikings had them.  It was easier not to think of Eiji's face if he tried to put a beard on that chin, or it had been before Chiyoko had shoved him into a Santa costume.  "The world is bleak.  Humans hurt each other.  It's the way of things."

     "I still want it."

     "What, Ankh?" Eiji asked cheerfully, and he realized he'd spoken aloud.  "You still want what?"

     Ankh thought about how he'd watched Gamel plow straight through a battalion, reducing more than thirty men to medals, and how a week later the rest of the camp drank in celebration even though the things that had killed their brothers still ran free.  He thought about how much it _hurt_ when Eiji prioritized other things over _his_ well-being, such little things, and how he wasn't sure why.  He examined Shingo's wistful thought that it would be nice if Hina just could find that right boy to give her gifts on Christmas Eve, and that little sad fear that Shingo kept buried that she'd never find anyone at all.

     He remembered Christmas, eight centuries before, when a church full of people sang about hope and kindness even as they knew wolves of desire waited for them outside.

    _I want all of it._

     "It's nothing," Ankh said, and walked away.

 

**Author's Note:**

> In my headcanon, the kingdom of the original OOO was somewhere in what is modernly Germany (but not all of Germany because Germany wasn't actually a single state until like practically RIGHT BEFORE World War 1). Historically, the Germanic love of Christmas is bigger than Eiji's dreams, and I caught myself wondering, in between listening to way too many renditions of the same old Christmas songs, whether the Greeed had been aware during any of those old Christmases.
> 
> OOO comes across maybe as a little wiser here than I expected him to. I was actually just sort of writing him from the perspective of a guy with a bleak view on human nature. OOO, it should be said, was absolutely the worst parental figure the Greeed could've been stuck with, up until Kougami came along and was just as much a horrible father.
> 
> Seriously, Kougami would make a horrible father. He'd shout "HAPPY BIRTHDAY" and then shove the kid at his mom and send them off with a severance package and a command to "FOLLOW YOUR DESIRES!"


End file.
